All Good things Come to an End

It is finally here, the end of my first graduate class online. It is bitter sweet like most endings of great adventures. I will miss the fun and creative projects that Steve had us working on, I will miss seeing the creativity of my fellow classmates, and I will miss the weekly chats with my classmates. Yes, there is a new adventure on the horizon, but like finishing a good book I just want to sit back and reflect on how much I enjoyed it. As I packed up my portfolio to send, my husband commented on the large pile of work. Funny, it did not seem like work. I look through the pile and smile at how much I learned and truly understand how to do. As was reiterated many times throughout our class, project-based learning is the way to own the information and to be able to use it later. When will our state and federal governments stop the insanity of testing so that we can get back to being great teachers and the students can actually learn something useful?
I learned so much through trial and error in this class. Yes, it was frustrating at times, but like anything you work hard at; the reward was great in the end. Students need to have that feeling of success. They need to see the product of their hard work in a physical form. Self-esteem and self worth is elevated when a visible result can be seen. Project-based teaching encompasses all types of learning styles and intelligence levels so that an individual's gifts and talents can be used and further developed. I have believed in this technique in teaching from the start of my career. I owned and operated a successful preschool for nineteen years that used a unit study approach(old term for project based) with great results over the years. Children learned and loved learning because it was fun. I home-schooled my two children through the elementary years so that education could be fun. Testing was not the focus in either of those teaching experiences. As a teacher, you know when your students understand the information. When students can show you what they learned and use what they learned, there is the proof that the teaching was successful.
A new adventure will be starting soon for me with another graduate class. I am looking forward to learning something new. I can only hope and pray that a new adventure begins in the public school system soon. So many great teachers are losing heart and drying up. So many students are not learning how to love learning. Students are losing that sense of adventure that can come with new information. There is nothing bitter sweet about that, just bitter.